Entertainment

Digg Changes Ridiculously Overhyped, As Usual

The social news site Digg announced some updates today that are generating lots of fawning, as usual. The changes are neat, but it seems that Digg is being congratulated for sneezing these days - the adulation is way out of proportion to the site's size and influence.

The Changes (Minor)

First off, they've moved from fixed width to a fluid layout, meaning that the design will expand to fill wide monitors. Meanwhile, the navigation links have shifted to the top. Next up, they've created a "Top Ten Stories" section on the right of the homepage to quickly see what the most Dugg stories are at any one time. Video has been popular, too, so they've done more than just adding a Videos link at the top of the page - they've also added on-site video previews, allowing you to view and Digg videos without leaving Digg.com. This means that the waves of traffic sent from Digg to YouTube will stop, and reinforces the idea that we need to measure more than just pageviews when it comes to video sites.

Another new addition: podcasting. You can now Digg your favorite podcasts and episodes. This won't be nearly as popular as video, but it's a worthwhile addition. Finally, they've added sections for videos and podcasts to the user profiles pages. Like all big changes, it's getting a mixed response: some love it, some hate it. That said, it doesn't look like there's going to be any kind of backlash, which is always a risk when you change a social site with an opinionated and vocal user base. For what it's worth, I think it's a good, worthwhile update.

The Hype (Major)

But let's face it: Digg is always overhyped in the blogosphere. They have 700,000 or so registered users, they say - that's a large number, but a good proportion of the social networks covered here have user numbers in the millions and hardly get any recognition. MySpace adds that many users in a week. The main reason is traffic: bloggers want it, and Digg can deliver it. There's also the fact that most bloggers are tech-oriented, and favor tech-related sites.

And finally, there's Alexa. Bloggers still refer to Alexa for website stats, despite the fact that it's ridiculously inaccurate. Stupidly inaccurate. Less accurate than just making the numbers up in your head. Back in April, a group of Digg users downloaded the Alexa toolbar in reaction to a story that Digg was about to overtake Slashdot on Alexa. This meant that Digg's Alexa rank grew almost fivefold overnight. What's more, all the tech related sites (particularly blogs) that had Digg users in their readership also saw a boost - in some cases, small sites appeared to grow tenfold in a matter of days. This graph shows the size of the shift, and its effect on blogs - enter the name of your favorite tech blog and you'll notice the same effect. This led to ridiculous claims that Digg was bigger than the New York Times, and other woefully inaccurate reporting (the linked post actually corrects the rumor). Alexa now favors Digg-related sites to such a strong degree that the MySpace add-on sites - many of which serve millions of pageviews per day, look tiny in comparison to even small technology sites.

In short: Digg is a great service, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not as important as you might think. The blogosphere echo-chamber, the massive number of tech-orientated bloggers and Alexa's inaccuracies have led to an overestimation of the site's importance to such a degree that a minor feature upgrade becomes the hot news of the day, gaining more coverage than the launch of MySpace Mobile.

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